How To Take Care Of Yourself: Sudarshan kriya and meditation for mammas and daddas

Sleeping baby = time to do kriya and meditate!

When I was 26 years old I did this course called ‘The Art of Living Breathing Part 1 Course.’  I know it sounds really naff when people say this, but it changed my life.  It really did.  When I registered for the course I didn’t realise just how much I needed it.   I’d spent so many years of my life being really busy.  I was constantly trying to fit in as much as I could.  I  guess I believed that the more I did the more fully I was living.  At the end of the day what that mostly left me with was a over-riding feeling of worn-out-ness.  (Yes, I made that word up).

On the course we learnt this breathing practice called the sudarshan kriya.  It was powerful.  I’d done many breathing techniques before and I’d been teaching yoga for a few years, but nothing I’d done came anywhere near this.  Our teacher said that if we really wanted to experience the benefits of the kriya we should practice it once a day for 30 minutes over 6 months.  I took it on.  I was really keen to see how it would affect me.   For me the benefits were huge.  I was able to get so much done in heaps less time, quite effortlessly. I was working as a freelance journalist at the time and needed to on-goingly produce a lot of articles quickly.  I’d really have to work at that, until I started incorporating the kriya into my daily routine.  Because my mind was so fresh after practicing the kriya I was able to punch those articles out in no time.  The words just flowed through me.  In fact the course had such a huge impact on me that I ended up becoming a volunteer teacher of it.

How To Get Your Kriya and Meditation Done When You Have A Newborn

For the last 12 years I’ve done the kriya at home pretty much every day. When Joshi was born I missed a few days, but was back into it within 10 days or so.   Kriya’s not something you can do while your baby’s awake and needing your attention, so the way I fitted it in initially was to do it during the day as soon as he fell asleep.  It could be any time of day, because he didn’t yet have anything that vaguely resembled a sleeping pattern.   Anyway, as soon as he’d fall asleep I’d drop what I was doing and go straight into my practice.  There was pretty much always laundry to do (when isn’t there with a baby!), dishes to wash, rooms to tidy, etc, but I knew that if I was to get it done I had to seize this small and unpredictable window of opportunity.  All the other things could be done when he was awake. Kriya couldn’t.

Of course there were times when my practice would get interrupted because he’d wake quite soon after he’d fallen asleep.  Sometimes I had to come out of my meditation really quickly to tend to him.  But I decided that I wasn’t going to complain about it.  Instead I’d practice being grateful that I at least got 10 or 20 minutes in, or whatever it was.  Better than nothing, right?

How To Get Your Kriya and Meditation Done When You Have A One Year Old

Now that Joshi’s almost a year old a lot has changed.  When he wakes up in the morning (usually around 6.15am), instead of getting a bit of extra sleep while Simon looks after Joshi, I get up, have a shower and spend the next hour doing my practice.  I do 15-20 minutes of yoga poses, 30 minutes of kriya and 10-20 minutes of sahaj samadhi meditation, (which I also learnt through the Art of Living Foundation).  When I’m done, I  look after Joshi while Simon does his.  This is what works best for us now.  It wouldn’t have worked when he was a newborn coz I was just too tired to get up at that time in the mornings.

What I often wonder is how parents cope without something like kriya in their day because this parenting journey is really demanding and you really need all the energy you can get.

Tip of the day for parents-to-be:  learn the sudarshan kriya and meditation now, before you become parents.

Extra tip for mammas-to-be:  learn how to do the kriya before you become pregnant because you can’t learn the it while you bub’s growing inside you.  Once you have your baby it’s so much harder to make the time to do the course.  Not that it’s not possible, just harder.  The Art of Living course is a total of about 18 hours spread over 6 consecutive sessions, so it’s a committment.  And you can’t miss any of the sessions, so you’ve got to be able to really get your head around taking it on fully. But once you’ve learnt it you’ve got one amazing tool with which to take care of your mind and body.  And I promise you, you’ll need that when you’re a parent, especially if you want to bring your best self to the family table and not your worn out, sleep-deprived self.

PS.  The Art of Living Courses are taught by volunteers in more than 150 countries, so you can do it almost anywhere in the world.  Oh, and your kids can do the Art Excel Course if they’re between 8 and 13 years old.   They’ll love it. It’s heaps of fun.

Saturday: Parental Recovery Day

Simon and Joshi asleep on Saturday morning

I don’t know what we’d do without Saturdays.

Before I became a mamma I had no idea that sleep deprivation was going to be such a big part of the equation. Joshi is now 10 months old and waking anywhere between three and eight times a night.   Apparently that’s entirely normal and healthy, for Joshi.  During Joshi’s night-time wakes he usually just needs a wee and a small drink (of boobie milk) and then goes straight back to sleep, no fuss.  Otherwise, he needs a cuddle or a big feed … or the delux combo mix of all of the above.  While I honestly don’t mind waking so much through the night, it’s pretty nice to reap the added sleep benefits available to us through our Saturday tag-teaming routine.  Consequently, for the past few months, this is how Saturday’s go in our home:

Around 6am: Joshi wakes up to play, bouncing up and down in bed between us with a huge smile on his face. He then goes to Simon, (who’s futilely attempting to get a few more minutes of sleep), pats his face and eyes and tugs on his nose until he wakes up.

6.15am: Simon and Joshi go through to the living room so that Joshi can play while I catch some more zzzzz’s. ‘Play’ usually includes
attempting to shred and eat the peace lily, climb into the dishwasher, eat the remote controls and deconstruct the lamps. During these next couple of hours Joshi might randomly crawl into the room and climb up on the bed for a feed, which always happens while I’m still horizontal and half asleep. Long gone are the days when Joshi would lie still next to me and feed fairly quietly. He wriggles about like crazy now, frequently moving in and out of downward dog while feeding. It’s like having a mini olympic gymnast attached to your boobie. Before I know it he’ll be feeding in head stand.

9am: I wake up, shower and take over. Simon passes out. Fortunately Simon has prepared breakfast whilst I’ve been asleep – Bonus! It’s usually oats with stewed cinnamon apples. Yummy. (Incidentally, oats are great for breast-feeding mammas coz it’s good for milk supply: double bonus).

Somewhere between 9.30am and 11.15am: Joshi typically falls asleep. As soon as he does, I usually stop whatever I’m doing to do kriya and meditation. If I don’t start my practice as soon as he falls sleep it’ll probably get interrupted half way through when Joshi wakes.

Between 11:15am and 12.15pm: I eat a huge lunch. (When you’re breast-feeding you need at least 2,200 calories per day, that’s about 500 more than usual, so I’m usually hungry and ready for lunch by 11:15am).

Around 1pm: Simon usually gets woken up. It’s a bit of a tough decision this one – I often wonder whether I should let him sleep until he wakes naturally, but if he sleeps for too long he’ll feel groggy and dull and may not be able to get to sleep until very late at night.  Alternatively, if he doesn’t sleep long enough he’ll still be tired. I usually wake him after three hours because I’ve had enough of him being asleep.

1pm onwards: Because we’ve both had all this lovely extra sleep we usually have enough energy to give the apartment a really thorough clean – dusting, vacuuming, getting a few loads of laundry on and then we take it in turns going for a 1hr Thai massage down the road. Ahhhh …. bliss.

By the end of Saturday the sleep deprivation has usually subsided (at least momentarily) and we have a whole lot more energy to keep up with Joshi.  I never imagined I’d need so much, but he’s so full of beans  we need every little bit we can get and more. “Just wait till he starts walking!” is what I keep hearing. “That’s when it really begins.” Hmmm, if nothing else, this mammahood thing sure is getting me fitter.